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How to be anonymous on social media

How to protect your identity depending on whom you're hiding from.

Published 12 July 2025
– By Naomi Brockwell
9 minute read

Using a pseudonym on social media can be an incredibly valuable way to reclaim your privacy online. In an age where digital footprints last forever, the ability to separate your online identity from your real-world persona is more important than ever.

Maybe you’re concerned about protecting yourself from online mobs that might target your job, your family, or your personal reputation. Maybe you don’t want everything you say online to be permanently linked to your real name. Perhaps you have multiple interests or roles in life (professional, personal, creative) and want to maintain separate identities for each.

Maybe you simply value your privacy. Having a pseudonymous account can be liberating. It allows you the freedom to explore new ideas, revise your beliefs, and reinvent yourself without every past opinion you’ve ever expressed being etched in stone and forever tied to you.

But setting up a pseudonymous account on social media isn’t always straightforward. Your approach will depend heavily on the platform you’re using. It will also depend on your threat model, which you can think of as whom you’re trying to hide your identity from, how private you need to be, and what’s at stake.

Threat models

It’s essential to understand your own threat model clearly, because the steps you’ll need to take to create a pseudonymous social media identity will vary dramatically at each level. For example, hiding your opinions from your boss will require very different precautions than hiding from a hostile government that wants to target you for your political beliefs.

There are countless threat models, but here are 3 general categories to give you some ideas of where you might fit in:

1. Hiding from the general public, and preventing low-level insider doxxing

This is an easier level to achieve. You simply don’t want your boss, colleagues, or random strangers linking your social media activity back to your real identity.

2. Hiding from the platform itself

Perhaps you have a higher profile, and you’re concerned about a platform employee accessing your personal details, billing information, or potentially doxxing you. At this level, you’re not being actively targeted, but you also don’t want the platform to know who you are. Protecting your identity here gets trickier and requires a deeper understanding of internet tracking and more rigorous control over your digital footprint.

3. Hiding from a hostile government that is targeting you

This is an extreme threat scenario. Perhaps you live under a hostile regime where political dissent is dangerous and consequences for being identified online can be severe. This level of threat requires meticulous discipline, and a tailored approach that goes far beyond general privacy advice. We won’t cover this threat model in this newsletter — not because it isn’t important, but because the stakes are too high for shortcuts. If your life or freedom could be at risk, please seek help from security professionals who specialize in operating anonymously under repressive conditions. Even small mistakes can be catastrophic.

Some organizations you might reach out to include:

Let’s use X as an example

Depending on which social media platform you want to use, the steps for setting up a pseudonymous account will vary dramatically. In this article, we’ll just focus on X as one example, because it’s a popular platform where pseudonymous accounts thrive. While Facebook aggressively pushes users to use real names and actively works to de-anonymize its users, X is a place where personas, satire accounts, and anonymous commentary are quite common.

That said, pseudonymity is a delicate privacy layer that can easily be broken. In this article, we are not providing exhaustive checklists, but rather examples of what kinds of mistakes lead to deanonymization, and tips for better protecting yourself.

Threat model 1: Hiding from the general public, and preventing low-level insider doxxing

Goal:
You simply don’t want random people or followers connecting your tweets to your real identity. You want to ensure that even the average X employee with backend access won’t immediately be able to see your real identity linked to your pseudonymous account. Perhaps you’re worried about accidental exposure, corruption, or misuse of internal access.

Tips:

  • Choose a completely separate profile name and username
    • Select a pseudonym that has no obvious connection to your real-world identity (avoid birthdays, locations, or nicknames).
  • Create a new email address (use an email alias service)
    • Don’t reuse your personal or work email. Use an email alias service (like SimpleLogin) that you only ever use for this account.
    • Even though your email address isn’t publicly visible on your profile, data breaches are extremely common. Presume that your credentials will be leaked. If your email ties back to your real identity, your pseudonym is blown.
  • Use a VoIP number for verification
    • Your personal cell number is a unique identifier that’s already been leaked everywhere. If you use it for verification, a data breach could link your identity to your pseudonymous account.
    • Use a VoIP service like MySudo or Cloaked to generate a clean, separate number.
  • Avoid personal identifiers
    • Don’t include real-world hobbies, your profession, specific locations, or distinctive personal details in your profile or posts.
  • Be careful whom you follow
    • Don’t follow your real account or people closely tied to you (e.g., best friend, sibling, coworker). These connections can unravel your anonymity.
  • Profile pictures and images
    • Don’t reuse photos from other accounts (reverse image searches can link them).
    • Consider AI-generated or royalty-free images.

These are some general tips that will help you. Just remember: any link, reference, or overlap between your pseudonymous account and real identity can risk exposure.

Threat model 2: Hiding from the platform itself

Goal:
You want to prevent the platform (X) from identifying you. This involves more sophisticated steps to scrub your digital footprint and reduce the metadata you leak by default.

This guide is not intended for people in life-threatening situations or under hostile regimes. It’s a conceptual framework for lower-risk scenarios, where the goal is to increase your privacy, not guarantee anonymity. Also keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list — it’s a starting point for awareness, not a guarantee of protection.

This model assumes you’ve already followed all steps from Threat Model 1. From here, you’re adding aggressive compartmentalization, anonymization, and metadata hygiene.

Core protections

  • Minimize metadata exposure
    • Always strip EXIF data from images before uploading. Use privacy-friendly tools (see our video on metadata scrubbing).
  • Use a masked or virtual payment method
    • If you subscribe to X Premium, use a virtual card like Privacy.com to avoid exposing your billing info. You can enter a fake name and billing address, and the payment will still go through (we talk about masked credit cards in this video).
  • Always use a VPN
    • VPNs help hide your IP address from the platform. Choose one that doesn’t log (e.g., Mullvad, ProtonVPN). Use it consistently.
  • Careful device management
    • Access X only via a privacy-focused browser (like Brave), never the app. Apps collect far more data and can bypass system-level protections, often in a super sneaky way that users don’t even know about.
    • Use a dedicated browser profile or even a separate browser just for your pseudonymous identity. This prevents cross-contamination from cookies, autofill, and history.

Advanced protections

  • Never use personal internet connections
    • Avoid using home, work, or school Wi-Fi. Use public networks far from places associated with you.
    • Pay for your VPN anonymously (cash, crypto, gift card). Consider adding Tor as an additional layer.
  • Avoid platform fingerprinting
    • Disable JavaScript when feasible.• Avoid using a unique combination of extensions that can fingerprint you.
    • Regularly rotate browser profiles and clear cookies, local storage, and cache.
    • Consider disabling advanced fingerprinting vectors like canvas rendering and WebGL.
  • Make sure email and phone have also been set up anonymously
    • Your email should be created using anonymous methods and not linked to anything else you use.
    • Your VoIP number should also be generated in a way that avoids personal identifiers. Accidental crossover is one of the most common ways people get deanonymized.
  • Avoid revealing patterns
    • Vary your writing style and posting schedule.
    • Don’t engage with people or topics tied to your real-world identity.
    • Avoid posting about events or niche communities that could reveal your location or background.
  • Understand legal and jurisdictional risks
    • Be aware of keywords and behavior that could flag surveillance systems.
  • Don’t trust devices
    • Don’t bring your pseudonymous device near your home or workplace.
    • Wi-Fi probes and Bluetooth signals can reveal patterns.
    • Disable or remove mics/cameras where possible.
  • Use dedicated hardware and OS
    • Use a separate device that’s never touched your real accounts.
    • If that’s not possible, use isolated OSes (like Virtual Machines, Tails OS, Qubes OS) for advanced compartmentalization
    • Always wipe and reinstall OS if using secondhand hardware.• Never log in to pseudonymous and personal accounts from the same browser or device.
  • Limit interaction with the platform
    • Don’t click on X notifications or emails (they often contain trackers).
    • Avoid engaging unless it’s strategic.
  • Maintain a rotation schedule
    • Periodically “burn” your pseudonymous account and start fresh: new device, new email, new behavior.
    • The longer an identity lives, the more data accumulates.
    • Keep your footprint minimal and delete what you no longer need.

Threat model 3: Hiding from the government in a high-risk environment

Goal:
You live under a hostile regime where expressing dissenting opinions online carries severe consequences. For instance, you might be in Turkey, China, Iran, or another environment known for targeting political opponents, activists, or critical voices.

Is true anonymity possible?

Let’s be clear: achieving absolute, foolproof anonymity online is extraordinarily difficult. Governments have massive resources — they have surveillance infrastructure, legal coercion, and advanced forensic tools. One small mistake can unravel everything.

This guide does not offer operational security for high-risk environments. If your life or freedom are on the line, consult with trained security professionals. Do not rely on generalized privacy guides.

What would that involve?

Just to give you a sense of what’s involved, you’d need to consider:

  • Buying hardware anonymously and avoiding camera networks
  • Creating burner accounts and rotating them frequently
  • Maintaining total behavioral and linguistic separation
  • Never discussing pseudonymous work, even with trusted friends
  • Compartmentalizing your life with extreme precision

And this is just the beginning. If this sounds overwhelming, that’s because it is.

If you’re in this situation: don’t go it alone.
Your safety is worth getting help.

The good news

The good news is that most people’s threat model doesn’t involve being specifically targeted by the government. What does that mean exactly? Targeting an individual requires considerable time, effort, and cost, so governments rarely do it unless there’s a clear reason. Instead, they rely on mass surveillance: automated systems that vacuum up data at scale and piece together your identity from the information you (or your devices) voluntarily give away.

And that’s why this is good news: most of this exposure is preventable. You don’t need extreme measures to protect yourself, you just need better defaults. By using VoIP numbers, email aliases, and privacy-focused browsers, you can significantly reduce how much of your life is available for collection in the first place. Small changes in behavior can go a long way toward protecting your identity and limiting what’s visible to mass surveillance systems.

Final thoughts

For most people, achieving basic pseudonymity online is much easier than it sounds. If your goal is to keep your professional life separate from your online commentary, or just to prevent casual Googling from exposing your social media presence, a thin veil of anonymity can go a long way. Choosing a new name, using a separate email and phone number, and keeping your circles compartmentalized are often all you need.

If you want a stronger break between your real identity and your online persona, you can layer on more privacy tools like VPNs, burner devices, and metadata hygiene. These steps aren’t just for activists or whistleblowers, they’re increasingly useful for anyone who wants to reclaim a sense of control in a world of hyper-connected data.

But if your life or freedom truly depends on staying anonymous — if you are being targeted by a government or powerful institution — then the game changes. In high-risk situations, pseudonymity becomes fragile. One careless follow, one reused phone number, one unstripped photo is all it takes to unravel everything. You need airtight operational security, and professional guidance to match the stakes.

No matter where you fall on that spectrum, this guide is here to help you think critically about how you engage online, and to offer practical, achievable steps that meet you where you are. Privacy is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. What matters most is understanding your threat model, being consistent in your habits, and staying aware of the tradeoffs you’re making.

Every privacy step you take makes a difference.

 

Your in privacy,
Naomi

Naomi Brockwell is a privacy advocacy and professional speaker, MC, interviewer, producer, podcaster, specialising in blockchain, cryptocurrency and economics. She runs the NBTV channel on Rumble.

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Zuckerberg: Skipping AI glasses puts you at a “cognitive disadvantage”

The future of AI

Published today 13:41
– By Editorial Staff
"The ideal form factor for AI, because you can let an AI see what you see throughout the day, hear what you hear, and talk to you", believes the Meta CEO.
2 minute read

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg warns that people without AI glasses will find themselves at a significant mental “disadvantage” in the future. During the company’s quarterly report, he shared his vision of glasses as the primary way to interact with artificial intelligence.

On Thursday, Meta released its quarterly report. In a call directed at investors, CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about the company’s investment in smart glasses and warned about the consequences of staying outside this development, reports TechCrunch.

I continue to think that glasses are basically going to be the ideal form factor for AI, because you can let an AI see what you see throughout the day, hear what you hear, and talk to you, Zuckerberg said during the investor call.

By adding screens, even more value can be unlocked, he argued, whether it involves holographic fields of vision or smaller displays in everyday AI glasses.

I think in the future, if you don’t have glasses that have AI – or some way to interact with AI – I think you’re … probably going to be at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage compared to other people, he added.

Unexpected success

Meta has focused on “smart” glasses like the Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta models. The glasses allow users to listen to music, take photos and ask questions to Meta AI. The products have become a surprising success – revenue from Ray-Ban Meta glasses more than tripled compared to the previous year.

However, the Reality Labs division has been costly. Meta reported $4,53 billion in operating losses for the second quarter, and since 2020, the unit has lost nearly $70 billion.

Competition is growing. OpenAI acquired Jony Ive’s startup company this spring for $6.5 billion to develop AI devices, while other companies are exploring AI brooches and pendants.

However, Zuckerberg is convinced about the future of glasses and connects them to the Metaverse vision.

The other thing that’s awesome about glasses is they are going to be the ideal way to blend the physical and digital worlds together, he concluded.

Meta has previously been known for contributing to the increasing surveillance society and has also ignored health aspects regarding radiation from wireless technology.

Samsung and Tesla sign billion-dollar deal for AI chip manufacturing

The future of AI

Published yesterday 9:22
– By Editorial Staff
Image of the construction of Samsung's large chip factory in Taylor, located in Texas, USA.
2 minute read

South Korean tech giant Samsung has entered into a comprehensive agreement with Tesla to manufacture next-generation AI chips. The contract, which extends until 2033, is worth $16.5 billion and means Samsung will dedicate its new Texas-based factory to producing Tesla’s AI6 chips.

Samsung receives a significant boost for its semiconductor manufacturing through the new partnership with Tesla. The electric vehicle manufacturer has chosen to place production of its advanced AI6 chips at Samsung’s facility in Texas, in a move that could change competitive dynamics within the semiconductor industry, writes TechCrunch.

The strategic importance of this is hard to overstate, wrote Tesla founder Elon Musk on X when the deal was announced.

The agreement represents an important milestone for Samsung, which has previously struggled to attract and retain major customers for its chip manufacturing. According to Musk, Tesla may end up spending significantly more than the original $16.5 billion on Samsung chips.

Actual output is likely to be several times higher, he explained in a later post.

Tesla’s chip strategy takes shape

The AI6 chips form the core of Tesla’s ambition to evolve from car manufacturer to an AI and robotics company. The new generation chip is designed as an all-around solution that can be used both for the company’s Full Self-Driving system and for the humanoid robots of the Optimus model that Tesla is developing, as well as for high-performance AI training in data centers.

Tesla is working in parallel with Taiwanese chip manufacturer TSMC for production of AI5 chips, whose design was recently completed. These will initially be manufactured at TSMC’s facility in Taiwan and later also in Arizona. Samsung already produces Tesla’s AI4 chips.

Since 2019, Tesla has developed its own custom chips after leaving Nvidia’s Drive platform. The first self-developed chipset, known as FSD Computer or Hardware 3, was launched the same year and installed in all of the company’s electric vehicles.

Musk promises personal involvement

In an unusual turn, Samsung has agreed to let Tesla assist in maximizing manufacturing efficiency at the Texas factory. Musk has promised personal presence to accelerate progress.

This is a critical point, as I will walk the line personally to accelerate the pace of progress. And the fab is conveniently located not far from my house, he wrote.

The strategic partnership could give Samsung the stable customer volume the company needs to compete with industry leader TSMC, while Tesla secures access to advanced chip manufacturing for its growing AI ambitions.

Women’s app hacked – thousands of private images leaked

Published 29 July 2025
– By Editorial Staff
1 minute read

An app that helps women identify problematic men became a target for hackers. Over 70,000 images, including selfies and driver’s licenses, were leaked to 4chan.

The dating app Tea, which allows women to warn each other about “red flags” in men, suffered a major data breach last week. According to 404 Media, hackers from the 4chan forum managed to access 72,000 images from the app’s database, of which 13,000 were selfies and driver’s license photos.

The app was created by software developer Sean Cook, inspired by his mother’s “terrifying” dating experiences. Tea has over four million active users and topped Apple’s App Store last week.

Careless data handling

The company stored sensitive user data on Google’s cloud service Firebase, where the information became accessible to unauthorized parties. Several cybersecurity experts have criticized the company’s methods as “careless”.

— A company should never host users’ private data on a publicly accessible server, says Grant Ho, professor at the University of Chicago, to The Verge.

Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, law professor at George Washington University, warns that digital “whisper networks” lose control over sensitive information.

— What changes when it’s digital and recoverable and save-able and searchable is you lose control over it, he says.

Tea has launched an investigation together with external cybersecurity companies.

Vogue faces backlash over use of AI generated model

Published 29 July 2025
– By Editorial Staff
The woman on the left in Vogue magazine does not exist in reality but has instead been created using AI.
2 minute read

Fashion magazine Vogue is using an AI-generated model in a new advertising campaign for clothing brand Guess. This has sparked strong reactions – from both readers and industry professionals – who warn about unrealistic beauty standards.

In the campaign, a blonde woman poses in a summer dress. The fine print reveals that the model was created by AI company Seraphinne Vallora. The criticism is extensive, with critics arguing that these ideals are unattainable – even for real models.

Wow! As if the beauty expectations weren’t unrealistic enough, here comes AI to make them impossible”, writes one person on platform X.

Some readers are so upset about the use of AI models that they are choosing to boycott the magazine because it has “lost its credibility” and are calling the practice “worrying”.

Creates unhealthy beauty standards

Fashion magazines have long been influential in shaping beauty standards, particularly for women. During the 2010s, a backlash grew against the thin “size zero” ideal. More and more publications began featuring models of different sizes within the so-called plus-size trend. Vogue, which has been described as “high fashion’s bible”, was slow to follow suit, leading to criticism. Only after pressure did the magazine begin showing greater diversity on its covers.

The use of AI models now raises concerns about new, inhuman standards, says Vanessa Longley, CEO of the organization Beat, which works against eating disorders.

If people are exposed to images of unrealistic bodies, it can affect their thoughts about their own body, and poor body image increases the risk of developing an eating disorder, she tells BBC.

Former model Sinead Bovell, who five years ago actually wrote an article about how AI models risk replacing real models, also criticizes the campaign. She questions how it might affect those working in the fashion industry, but above all believes it risks having a negative effect on people’s mental health.

Beauty standards are already being influenced by AI. There are young girls getting plastic surgery to look like a face in a filter – and now we see people who are entirely artificial, she says.

Vogue told the BBC that the AI model was an advertisement, not an editorial decision, but declined to comment further. Guess has also not commented on the criticism of its advertisement.

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